Marketing Strategies for Summer Downtime

For many small businesses, summer can be a slow time with clientele out of town or if your work is seasonal. However, this does not mean that you should let your marketing efforts lag. There are several things you can do for your business this summer that will pay off in the months that follow:

Keep in touch. Don’t underestimate the value of repeat business. By staying connected and optimizing your relationship with your existing customers, you can build your business in the most cost-effective way possible. Let your customers know what’s new, what you’ve changed or updated. Provide them with useful, relevant information via newsletter, blog, or Facebook. Consider holding a contest or including a giveaway. In a recent newsletter that we sent to Customer Lobby members, for example, we offered a free Customer Call review to the first 10 people to respond. The response was fantastic!

Build up your contact database. Before you send out that newsletter or email campaign, you need to build up your database of customers and prospects. Not only do customers prefer email marketing, but it’s by far the most cost-effective way to communicate with your customers. If you don’t already have an email list, now is a good time to start creating one. For more information on building an email list, read Ted’s blog post.

Get creative. Reach out to your customers and prospects with a gift offer for those current customers who refer new people to you. Make sure that your customer reviews are featured prominently on your website, on major search engines, and on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter in order to convert prospective customers.

Update your website. Make sure that your website is optimized and that all of the contact information is correct. For some simple but critical conversion tips for local business websites, read Kevin’s latest blog. Local SEO expert Andrew Shotland also blogged recently about the importance of making sure your website works.

Get new reviews. Ask your customers for feedback. Even those on vacation may have a few minutes to do a review for you from their laptop or mobile phone — This may actually be the best time to reach them! What’s more, you may find that you are more available to make improvements to your business and implement changes based on their feedback while you have some downtime.